Nothing but the Pub

   About ten years ago, not a day’s tramp from Ballarat, set well back from a dusty track that started nowhere in particular and had no destination worth mentioning, stood the Shamrock Hotel. It was a low, rambling, disjointed structure, and bore strong evidence of having been designed by an amateur artist in a moment of vinous frenzy. It reached out in several well-defined angles, and had a lean-to building stuck on here and there; numerous outhouses were dropped down about it promiscuously; its walls were propped up in places with logs, and its moss-covered shingle roof, bowed down with the weight of years and a great accumulation of stones, hoop-iron, jam-tins, broken glassware, and dried ’possum skins, bulged threateningly, on the verge of utter collapse. The Shamrock was built of sun-dried bricks, of an unhealthy, bilious tint. Its dirty, shattered windows were plugged in places with old hats and discarded female apparel, and draped with green blinds, many of which had ...

 “Whosoever unlawfully and with violence or by any threat of violence  prevents any person from or obstructs him in working at or exercising,  his lawful trade or occupation, or beats or uses any violence or threat  of violence to any such person, with intent to prevent him, shall,  on conviction before two Justices, be liable to imprisonment  for a term not exceeding six months , or a fine not exceeding £20.”        The second time I was in Lockhart in this version of my life was in 2013 and I was on the trail of the Great Shearers’ strikes of the 1880’s and 90’s. Brookong Station, south west of the town on the Urana road was the place where Henry Baylis, the dour Scots Police Magistate from Wagga Wagga read this section of the Riot Act for the first time in the history of the colony.        I booked into the Commercial Hotel in the centre of town – a pub that’d caught my eye 3 years earlier - and then headed out to...

       With his German-born wife, Sophie, Thomas Holt arrived in Sydney on the Helvellyn in 1842 after being inspired by reading a German translation of Dunmore Lang’s writings on the new colony. He was the son of a wool merchant and he hit the ground running, soon becoming a wool-buyer, magistrate, financier and board member of companies from Railways to gold mining.        By the time he was 44 he’d made a big enough pile to retire from business with land interests which peaked at over 12 thousand square kms – just a bit bigger than the entire county of Yorkshire where he was born.        But retired indolence wasn’t his gig so in 1856 he successfully stood for election to the first Legislative Assembly and became colonial treasurer. In 1865 he was accused by a political rival of, er, of the expediency of voting early and voting often. The charges didn’t stick, Holt sued his accuser for malicious prosecution and a...

  Mulga Creek Hotel Byrock NSW To purchase my latest book on the Pubs of the Murray and Edward Rivers click on: nothingbutthepub.com                So anyway there’s no mine, no diggings, without their mullock piles and noodling for good pubs is no different – clichéd themed oh-so-cute and quaint joints with transient staff and oblivious management with zero-care factors about the organic entity of which they are briefly a part, are the inevitable slag piles of fossicking for the gems of the outback hotel landscape.             But for every slag pile, every mullock heap, unless it’s a blue duck, there’re gems – precious places like, well ….. like the Mulga Creek Hotel at Byrock. I’ve dropped in here three times and every time it’s been wet. Today’s no exception and there’re puddles out the front in the empty parking area.            Henry Lawson graced Byrock i...

Down the western side of the Walwa pub there’s a narrow sealed road heading north to the river and a gorgeous rest spot. I head down then to check the ‘Old Man’. It doesn't disappoint. (Does it ever?) Across the Murray’s waters the trees bounce the early afternoon light back onto the waters as an eddy nearby gurgles and some ducks murmur about the dangers I represent. Then it’s back to the town, and into the lane behind the pub before parking Super Ten beside the sign warning to go no further. Inside there’s no other customer in the large front bar, just a woman sitting behind the counter. She looks up at me briefly, manages a quarter of smile, then it’s back to her digital tablet. I shed at a distant wall-side table and head over. She looks up without getting up and after I tell her I have a booking for the night, finds the motivation to rouse herself, tell me it’ll be forty dollars, takes my credit card, hands me the key, tells me where the room is an...